Hackers, Heroes of the Computer Revolution | Page 6

also
had a particular keypunch machine called the 407. Not only could it punch cards, but it
could also read cards, sort them, and print them on listings. No one seemed to be
guarding these machines, which were computers, sort of. Of course, using them would be
no picnic: one needed to actually wire up what was called a plug board, a
two-inch-by-two-inch plastic square with a mass of holes in it. If you put hundreds of
wires through the holes in a certain order, you would get something that looked like a
rat's nest but would fit into this electromechanical machine and alter its personality. It
could do what you wanted it to do.
So, without any authorization whatsoever, that is what Peter Samson set out to do, along
with a few friends of his from an MIT organization with a special interest in model
railroading. It was a casual, unthinking step into a science-fiction future, but that was
typical of the way that an odd subculture was pulling itself up by its bootstraps and
growing to underground prominence--to become a culture that would be the impolite,

unsanctioned soul of computerdom. It was among the first computer hacker escapades of
the Tech Model Railroad Club, or TMRC.
* * *
Peter Samson had been a member of the Tech Model Railroad Club since his first week at
MIT in the fall of 1958. The first event that entering MIT freshmen attended was a
traditional welcoming lecture, the same one that had been given for as long as anyone at
MIT could remember. LOOK AT THE PERSON TO YOUR LEFT . . . LOOK AT THE
PERSON TO YOUR RIGHT . . . ONE OF YOU THREE WILL NOT GRADUATE
FROM THE INSTITUTE. The intended effect of the speech was to create that horrid
feeling in the back of the collective freshman throat that signaled unprecedented dread.
All their lives, these freshmen had been almost exempt from academic pressure. The
exemption had been earned by virtue of brilliance. Now each of them had a person to the
right and a person to the left who was just as smart. Maybe even smarter.
But to certain students this was no challenge at all. To these youngsters, classmates were
perceived in a sort of friendly haze: maybe they would be of assistance in the consuming
quest to find out how things worked, and then to master them. There were enough
obstacles to learning already--why bother with stupid things like brown-nosing teachers
and striving for grades? To students like Peter Samson, the quest meant more than the
degree.
Sometime after the lecture came Freshman Midway. All the campus
organizations--special-interest groups, fraternities, and such-- set up booths in a large
gymnasium to try to recruit new members. The group that snagged Peter was the Tech
Model Railroad Club. Its members, bright-eyed and crew-cutted upperclassmen who
spoke with the spasmodic cadences of people who want words out of the way in a hurry,
boasted a spectacular display of HO gauge trains they had in a permanent clubroom in
Building 20. Peter Samson had long been fascinated by trains, especially subways. So he
went along on the walking tour to the building, a shingle-clad temporary structure built
during World War II. The hallways were cavernous, and even though the clubroom was
on the second floor it had the dank, dimly lit feel of a basement.
The clubroom was dominated by the huge train layout. It just about filled the room, and if
you stood in the little control area called "the notch" you could see a little town, a little
industrial area, a tiny working trolley line, a papier-mache mountain, and of course a lot
of trains and tracks. The trains were meticulously crafted to resemble their full-scale
counterparts, and they chugged along the twists and turns of track with picture-book
perfection.
And then Peter Samson looked underneath the chest-high boards which held the layout. It
took his breath away. Underneath this layout was a more massive matrix of wires and
relays,and crossbar switches than Peter Samson had ever dreamed existed. There were
neat regimental lines of switches, and achingly regular rows of dull bronze relays, and a
long, rambling tangle of red, blue, and yellow wires--twisting and twirling like a
rainbow-colored explosion of Einstein's hair. It was an incredibly complicated system,
and Peter Samson vowed to find out how it worked.
The Tech Model Railroad Club awarded its members a key to the clubroom after they
logged forty hours of work on the layout. Freshman Midway had been on a Friday. By
Monday, Peter Samson had his key.
* * *

There were two factions of TMRC. Some members loved the idea of spending their time
building and painting replicas of certain trains with historical and emotional